Abstract:

With the evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the use of computers and mobile devices in educational environments is changing the way the classes are developed. Such tools provide better interaction and integration between the teacher and the student, increasing the possibilities of learning. Furthermore, the student profile of the 21st century incorporates a set of knowledge about technology and technological resources, which forces teaching institutions to seek new methodologies for the teaching-learning process. In this context, the teacher assumes a fundamental role, since he must have the ability to conduct such process, contemplating the expectations of the student. The teacher ceased to be the one who holds the knowledge and started to play the role of mediator within the student's learning process. The main question is how educators are using the potential of ICTs? There are ways to enhance this use in the present day, because ICTs can be used as tools to support the learning process for the student and the teacher. Its use should not be restricted to scanned presentations, Internet search or e-mail exchange. Another important element is how the student's learning process is evaluated by the teacher? Such assessments in many situations, even with all current technologies, tend to be weariful and may not represent accurate results. There is a need to assess the student's learning process more accurately. Thus, one can identify the learning difficulties of the students and recommend solutions to minimize the problems. In the context of our proposal, the recommendations should be based on the profile of the student, where each profile is grouped taking into consideration the student's performance, his level of learning and the presented difficulties. In this way, it is essential that the teacher identifies patterns of learning, which can be accomplished using tools based on ICTs. In this work, we present a method that aims to recommend didactic content to the student who has learning difficulties. The recommendation method uses student performance to make suggestions for content that needs to be improved. This performance is obtained through a computational tool, in an environment that involves the generation of data and the presentation through graphs that allow the teacher to analyze the evolution of the student. The recommendation method suggests to the teacher actions and didactic contents to be applied to the student who presents learning difficulties.

The method proposed in this work covers:
(i) the elements necessary for modeling the student profile;
(ii) the relationship between the elements of the student profile;
(iii) the possibility for the teacher to use weighting in the profile elements;
(iv) at what stage of the learning process the recommendation will be made;
(v) what will be recommended; (vi) and how the recommendation will be presented.

In this work we use as a computational resource a proprietary tool, which is under development, called SPAS – Student Performance Accompaniment System.

Keywords:

Student performance, Computer Education, Recommender System.